Saved.

I listened to a man tell his story of being born again. He threw himself a small but steep cliff after wandering in to gorges of Ithaca, NY. He was at the end of his rope, struggling with depression for years and tired of it. He tumbled down and was battered and bruise, yet alive. He lay there. And he talked to God and he suddenly became filled with hope and joy. There was an aliveness that he felt in his body, a sense of oneness. He knew in that moment and in many moments since, that he was okay. That everything was okay. That there were larger forces at work around him. He knew his time on Earth was not done yet. That despite his demons, despite his hardships and struggles, that there was more than that, more than him and his unbearable troubles. And they became bearable, they became understood on some level inside him. In that moment, they disappeared, they would return days later but when they did they had a context, he had some understanding now. He felt unconditionally supported and endlessly loved. He would not return to that level of despair again.

I caught my breath, as I listened and drove myself through the forest to the ocean. I had stopped breathing as I listened. I had lost myself in his words. I had found a kindred spirit. He went to his bible, he was born again into Jesus Christ. We spoke different languages, we told ourselves different stories and yet, they were the same. And yet, there is another person, like me who had been saved, by God or angels or spirit guides or somebody or something. Something sent its hand upon us and we were saved.

I am not alone. I am not alone in my loss and I am not alone in the experience of a miracle. In the experience of miracels, plural. I have endured much in the 13 months after my son died. My son died, I nearly died. Six months later, I had a surgery intended to repair my torn uterus during which I almost died and I lost my ability to carry another child. Six months after that, my 13 year relationship ended, leaving the shell of myself that I had become cracked all to pieces. I sat on the floor of my spa a pile of rubble, watching my brain begin to rationalize my way out of this life. My daughter, who tethered me to this Earth up until this point, I began to think would be better off without me. The final final. the way out. I could hardly take care of her before the final straw of my husband’s deception came to light. Now I knew, I could not only not take care of myself in my grief, I could not take care of my daughter on my own. I couldn’t envision a life going forward without my husband. What would I ever do without him? How would I ever survive? Yet, I could no longer stay with him. He dealt me the final blow. And now I could go, now I was fully broken, fully lost, so that my daughter would be better off without me. She could just mourn me, instead of being raised, instead of being subject to a deeper sorrow wither of us knew was possible. I could die now. I could leave her better off. I hurled myself off the cliff. My own mind destroying me like a terminal, aggressive, unmerciful cancer. I lay at its end, battered and bruised and I looked up at the night sky and the next day, I was saved.

I try to focus on this. Yes, three tragedies. Yes, three impossibly life altering events that left me sure I couldn’t continue in this life. But also, also, three miracles right along with them. The surgeon met with my husband, shaken and ashey, saying they didn’t know how I had survived the birth. How the artery leading from my uterus straight to my heart didn’t empty itself of all my blood but for the wy my son left my womb. But for the way his absence flopped the fleshy uterus on top of itself, on top of it’s artery to stem the bleeding. He said I’d barely survived the surgery. They went in, moved the uterus from how it had landed and the blood poured out again. Gushing, preparing a transfusion, slicing me open to find the source, unable for moments to find it, knowing I, they, we had only minutes and then finding it. And by whatever surgical magic, whatever training and expereince had led them to this moment they stopped it and I lived. They saved me. I was saved. Then the day after life’s latest blow to my will to keep going, the hand of God, the angels and guides, the Great Mother herself, brought me back to myself. Untethered me from my son. From my living both here with my daighter and there, wherever there is, with my son. And my heart was healed and my spirit returned to my body and I could see the future again. I could feel hopeful again. I could feel alive, so fully and ecstatically alive. I was high for days, for weeks. I came back into my body with such fervor, with such strength that I knew myself again. I knew that I was here for a reason, that my work here, in this lifetime, is not done. And with as much certainty and sureity, I knew too, that I was done with my relationship. That I was done with that energy, that way of being. The blinders came off. The avoidance, the looking away, the seeing the best in other person, gone in an instant. I would live. I would be alive. At any cost, with any loss. There would come doubt and fear and anger and confusion and grief and penetrating sorrow. But I now knew I was okay, everything was okay, despite all human evidence to the contrary. I was freed of my son and my husband in an instant. I was free. I was saved. Three tragedies and three miracles to match. Two at the hand of humans, my son and the surgeons and one at the hand of something higher, something bigger, something more than I will ever know in this life. I try to focus on these. These three miracles that have left me here, in my humanness and all the unbearable discomfort that comes along with it, okay. Hopeful. Centered. Sure.

We speak different languages but we are the same. We hang different meaning, different explanations, different stories, we use different words and yet, we are the same. I am born again into what is next for me. Into what feels like the beginning of my true journey, my ture work, my true purpose. I don’t know what any of that is, but I know that I have it. I don’t know what it will look like, what it will feel like, what will come of it but I know it. And now I can rest in that. I can lean into it. I can call on it. I am the mother of all mothers, the wife of all wives, the woman of all women. I feel my spiritness. I feel my connection. It is often contrasted, and strongly with the human experience, now most often cloaked in firey anger, resistiance to waht I don’t understand about what has happened to me, a sorrow and grief that has let up, that just visits now and then and no longer rules my experience. I try to focus on that. I try to focus on my experience of being a spirit. I try to integrate this understanding, this experience with that of being human.

I try to make sense where none can be made. My son cannot tell me why, my husband will not, nor would I believe his words, anyway. There is no reason to match the stark fact of my bareness. There are no explanations. There is only trust. Perhaps the hardest of all to master. To throw yourself off the cliff, to lay back and look at the night sky, bruised and battered but breathing. But caught. But saved. There is nothing, to borrow a phrase, but blind faith.